2025
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February: Galley proofs for the paper ” Warming-induced retreat of West Antarctic glaciers weakened carbon sequestration ability but increased mercury enrichment” by Zhou et al. that will be published in Nature Communications arrived yesterday. Exciting that it will be publsihed soon!
January: Yipeng’s paper on the impact of the evasion of dimethylmercury from Arctic waters on methylmercury in the atmosphere is accepted for publication in Science Advances. Rob and Hannah are co-authors.
January: Maodian Liu’s paper on the effect of climate change on the sequestration of mercury and carbon in the Ross Sea is accepted for publication in Nature Communications. Rob is a co-author.
January: A new semester begins….
2024 ends
December: The AGU meeting in Washington DC was a great event with a very interesting Geotraces session focused on the GP17-OCE cruise and there was also a mercury session, plus other interesting sessions.
November: Given the election result, the siding of a South African scumbag with the incoming administration who is selling his sole for cash, as he has done already with X while hurting the livelihood of others, and related things, I will no longer be posting on X/Twitter. Follow me on Bluesky with the link above.
November: Many things happening as the semester winds down. Rob and Melissa will be in DC for the Fall AGU meeting starting on Dec 8th. Melissa has a presentation related to her studies in the Gulf of Maine (GoM) and Rob is the lead author on a poster about air-sea exchange during the GEOTRACES GP17-OCE cruise. Yipeng and Marissa will also be there, and are also on other papers on GEOTRACES and the GoM cruises as co-authors. Hope to see you there!
November: Sophia submitted a revised version of her thesis before the deadline so she is on track to graduate this semester. Congratulations to her! A MS thesis with an amazing amount of data and great analysis of the trends and relationships.
November: Celia Chen gives a seminar in the UConn Natural Resources Dept on her Hg and PFAS studies. Good to catch up with her and talk about the projects with Jess/Anika on oyster Hg concentrations and the many implications of this for the US East Coast.
November: 14th. Sophia successfully presented and defended her MS thesis research focused on the Gulf of Maine and the Penobscot River. Her thesis must be submitted before month’s end if she is to graduate this semester. Well done, Sophia!!
September: Cruise ended with a few days of bad weather but we got the samples needed. Also, after a little delay, sampling at the Tudor Hill site is now underway.
September: Equipment setup at tower for air sampling but no power – as a result of Ernesto – when we left the shore. Currently northwest of Bermuda and approaching Station 5. Sun has been shining mostly and seas relatively calm so far. Holding thumbs for the next few days.
September: Reviews back from Science Advances on Yipeng’s paper on Arctic Ocean sources of dimethylmercury and their impact on atmospheric methylated Hg and Methylmercury deposition. Lots of good comments and revision is underway!
August: As the month ends we start mobilizing on the Atlantic Explorer for a cruise in the vicinity of Bermuda for 6 days. Rob, Hannah, Jingjing and Olivia will be on board.
August: Yipeng’s paper on the development of a modified version of an air mercury analyzer that uses less argon is published in Atmospheric Environment. See here
August: The next semester has begun!
August: Olivia Patrinicola, a new MS student with Penny Vlahos, co-advised by Rob, will also participate in the cruise and collect samples for Hg and for inorganic carbon. She started in August to get some background on Hg prior to the cruise.
August: After returning from Cape Town there was a last hectic effort to get equipment packed and shipped to Bermuda for the upcoming cruises. Some equipment needed to be repaired at the last minute so hopefully it will be available for the upcoming setup on Bermuda and for the cruise. An extra angst was caused by the loss of the trace metal CTD on a prior cruise. It was to be shipped to Bermuda after that. In its place, a CTD from UConn is being shipped to use during the cruise. Lots of back and forth organizing this! Many folks involved.
July: The Cape Town ICMGP is done! Rob ended up making presentations for Yipeng and Hannah as their trip to Cape Town was delayed because of the global internet glitch. While they also arrived late, Melissa and Sophia were still able to make there presentations. Others were also affected and
Vivien did not make it to the conference. Overall, the conference was a great success and many excellent presentations were made and lots was learnt.
July: Rob was involved in coordinating the activities for students at the ICMGP including judging of student poster and oral presentations, a Mentors Lunch and a Student Social evening. All went well. Rob presented prizes to the winners during the closing ceremony.
July: Rob received an award for promoting Mercury Research in Africa at the 16th ICMGP during the opening ceremony
July: The ICMGP in Cape Town is rapidly approaching! Rob, Hannah, Sophia and Melissa will attend and present their work from the Gulf of Maine studies and from the Arctic cruise. Should be a fun event and lots to learn. Rob is involved in various aspects of the meeting including the organization of the student events and he will present the Lifetime Achievement Award to the next recipient, Xinbin Feng, at the opening ceremony.
July: Testing and packing again! Testing the atmospheric and underway
samplers, and prepping bottles for the next research cruise which will be from Bermuda in early September on the RV Atlantic Explorer. Also, we will set up air and rain samplers at the Tudor Hill tower on Bermuda for Hg studies that are beginning. All part of a NSF funded research project.
June: Hannah defends her dissertation proposal.
June: Djamilatou Dabre, studying in Grenoble, France, with Stephane Guedron, visited the lab in June to run her samples collected in Burkina Faso at gold mining sites for MeHg.
Sediments, soils and fish were analyzed and the data looks great and interesting. Gathering at our house just before she left to return to France.
May: Rob is rated by Research.com’s ranking of Best Scientists in Environmental Sciences as # 284 in the world and 144 in the US, and #1 at UConn; also, in Chemistry as #1307 in the world and 551 in the US, and #2 at UConn.
April: As April ends so does the cruise. A very successful endeavor! On board from UConn was, from left, Jingjing, Ben, Rob, Sophia, Hannah and Melissa. Vivien and Christine were on board from Dartmouth, as well as other groups. The cruise in the Gulf of Maine began on April 20. Water, particles and net tows were completed. It seems that this cruise will be a great comparison to the cruise in April 2023. The phytoplankton were very different this year from last.
April: Jingjing Yuan arrives as a post-doc from China. Great to have her join the team!
March: Gunnar and Kati’s papers are published! See here for Gosnell et al. and Hansen et al.
March: Presentations accepted for ICMGP in July 2024 in Cape Town for Hannah, Melissa, Sophia and Rob. They are also co-authors on other presentations by our collaborators. its going to be an excellent meeting and a great time in Cape Town!
February: Former student Kati’s paper examining fluxes of Hg and MeHg from sediments and their bioaccumulation into phytoplankton is accepted for publication in Environmental Pollution.
February: Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans. While none of the current lab members attended there were presentations on our Arctic studies in 2021 looking at Hg and Rn and gas exchange (Stephens et al.) and vertical mixing (Hammond et al.) and also a presentation by Emma Bullock from WHOI on her Hg studies in the Arctic and groundwater fluxes.
February: Gunnar’s paper on uptake of Hg and MeHg into different bivalve species is accepted for publication in Archives of Environ. Contam. and Toxicol.
February: The Science Steering Committee of the ICMGP convenes remotely to assess the submitted abstracts and to assign them to sessions, posters and oral presentations. A successful meeting was had. Next, is the conference in Cape Town in July 2024!
February: Hannah returns to UConn after a very successful Geotraces cruise around Antarctica, and some time off in New Zealand after the cruise. Lots of good data already and more to come.
February: Yipeng submits his paper on methylmercury gas exchange and atmospheric methylated Hg dynamics in the Arctic based on results from the 2021 Arctic cruise.
January 2024: A new semester begins….
January: Rob, Hannah, Sophia, Melissa and Yipeng submit abstracts to the International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP). They are also co-authors on many other abstracts submitted.